The battle over CRISPR (Clustered regularly-interspaced short palindromic repeats) patents highlights the importance of having a sound patent strategy before filing the first disclosure. The University of California v. Broad Institute, Inc. is an excellent example of the difference a well-executed strategy can make.

In 2013, teams from UC Berkeley and the Broad Institute filed applications seeking patents for the process of editing genetic information using the CRISPR-Cas9 protein. This came only months after both parties published scientific articles and filed provisional patents. Their strategies when filing their patent applications were distinct and the results decisive.